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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24831055">looked at death (in a tarot card)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynyrdLionheart/pseuds/LynyrdLionheart'>LynyrdLionheart</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Vampire Diaries (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Celebrity AU, F/M, They are exes, actress Caroline, musician Klaus, not Stefan friendly, until they're not</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:33:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,720</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24831055</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynyrdLionheart/pseuds/LynyrdLionheart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She meets him at nineteen.  She leaves him at twenty-one.  And maybe, at twenty-nine, she can find her way back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>138</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>looked at death (in a tarot card)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/melsbels/gifts">melsbels</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is for KC Bingo 2020 and the square "do you ever think of me".  So it's kind of angsty, but then it's not.  Idea came from listening to "Dying in L.A." by Panic! At the Disco (you should listen as you read) and talking to Melissa.  Can also be found on my tumblr.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It started like this.</p>
<p>She was eighteen.  She rode into the city with bright eyes and hopeful heart.  She had the whole world in front of her, and she can remember walking down the boulevard, looking at the stars, and thinking that, someday, her name would be there too. </p>
<p><br/>She was eighteen, and someone gave her a fake ID, and it gave her free passage into every bar in town. She needed that passage.  You didn't meet the people you needed to meet in daylight at Starbucks.  You met them in the dark while bands that were just as hopeful as she was played in the background. </p>
<p>She was nineteen and had just finished her first speaking role - a tiny extra role, but the star of the whole thing was Meryl Streep - and she walked into a bar to celebrate.  She had friends, but they had already celebrated that night.  So she wanted this celebration to be just for her.  The place was all about music, no movie executives to be seen.  But on stage?<br/>Caroline had showed up to L.A. with bright eyes and a hopeful heart, and part of her had wanted some of the magic of movies to be real.  She had learned in the year since her arrival that wasn't the case, but when her eyes met His?  She was a believer again.</p>
<p>His voice was low, and had an underlying accent to it, and she couldn't look away from him.  It might have been embarrassing, except he was looking right back, and even though she didn't fully register a word of the song, she felt like it was directed right at him.</p>
<p>In the end, he bought her a drink.</p>
<p>In the end, she went home with him.</p>
<p>In the end... that was the end of her life Pre-Klaus.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>At twenty-nine, Caroline classified her time in L.A. to two strict categories.  Pre-Klaus, and Post-Klaus.  There was also During Klaus, two glorious years that she tried not to remember, because...</p>
<p>Just, because.  It was easier.</p>
<p>Just like it had been easier to walk away in the end, than to risk staying.  Just like it had been easier to agree to date Stefan at twenty-three and stay with him through six years despite relative indifference towards each other.</p>
<p>At least... she thought it had been easier with Stefan.</p>
<p>Until he decided to implode her life by getting caught naked with his brother's wife.</p>
<p>She hadn't been in love with Stefan, had never come close to believing he was in love with her... but she had thought they'd had a certain level of respect for each other.  A respect borne out of the fact that they had become Hollywood's It Couple and increased each other's careers exponentially.  Separate, they had just been two more pretty and talented people in a city full of people every bit as pretty and talented.  As Steroline, they had become the romance of the decade.  </p>
<p>It had all been a lie, but it had been a romantic lie that the world around them ate up.  And it had gotten them both jobs they might not have gotten otherwise.</p>
<p>All it required, was a bit of respect.  All it required was that they keep it in their pants.</p>
<p>Caroline had done it.  It hadn't even really been that hard.  She'd done passion and messy and she'd walked away from it, because she'd been too young and too new to stand up under the scrutiny it brought her.  She'd rather put forward the shining front that no one bothered trying to dig beneath.</p>
<p>And the whole time, Stefan had been screwing his brother's wife.  His brother's wife who was one half of Delena, a couple whose popularity might even eclipse Stefan and Caroline's, simply because they'd come from the same home town, and the idea of a childhood romance turned lifelong partnership was difficult to beat.<br/>It was all about the story after all.</p>
<p>And so, Caroline had been in meetings with Stefan and his agent, and her agent, all of them putting forward ideas of how to fix the whole mess.  And their consensus seemed to be that Stefan would have a press conference, where Caroline stood bravely and loyally at his side while he announced that he had made a mistake, and they would appreciate privacy while they worked to salvage their relationship.</p>
<p>It was a load of garbage, and Caroline had listened to it and felt empty.</p>
<p>Not angry.</p>
<p>Not sad.</p>
<p>Not even a little annoyed.</p>
<p>She had just felt empty.  And then she began to wonder when that had started.  Because it hadn't happened immediately Post-Klaus.  During that time, she'd sometimes felt so full that she wasn't sure she would ever be able to fully remove him from her.  He had indelibly left his mark, and she'd felt broken by it.  But at some point, during those seven years, she had become numb.<br/>So she had looked around the table, at the people who were fighting for something she didn't care about.  Something she was pretty sure she had never cared about... and suddenly she missed herself at eighteen, bright eyed and full of hope.  That girl had felt so much, and it had seemed awful at times, but it had to be infinitely better than this nothingness.<br/>Caroline stood, and without ever once saying a word, she left them all behind.  At some point, the constant ring of her phone - Stefan and her agent trying to reach her - got annoying, so she turned it off and just kept walking around the city.</p>
<p>She tried to look at it with the eyes of someone just arriving, to see the promise and hope, but it just seemed... dull.  Grey.  Like any city on an overcast day, and she couldn't find what it was that had drawn her here so desperately when she was a teenager fresh out of school and fleeing Virginia and dead parents that had never really seemed to want her anyway. </p>
<p>She turned her face away from the clouds and focused on the pavement beneath her feet instead.  </p>
<p>She didn't even realize where her feet had taken her, down streets that she had avoided for years, but that she still remembered so well.  And then she was there. </p>
<p>It was a little run down compared to the clubs that had become her haunts in the years since that night she planned to celebrate.  But the old sign outside had the same name written on it, and when she pushed through the door, the interior was still lit just enough for the mood to be right.  It was the middle of the afternoon; the place wouldn't fill up for hours yet, but it had a regular day crowd that came in for food an whatever new band had scored a set on the stage that had created Klaus Mikaelson.</p>
<p>It didn't matter if it was a terrible time - every would be musician wanted to stand on that stage.</p>
<p>She looked to the stage as the first notes of a song that seemed familiar to her began to play.  </p>
<p>It was almost a decade earlier, and she was stepping through the doors for the very first time, and she couldn't take her eyes off of him, and the way he owned the stage, even as he played an acoustic set that would never sound quite right anywhere else. </p>
<p>It was almost a decade later, and his gaze still found hers, as if it was that very first time.  And she couldn't look away.</p>
<p>She knew the exact length of the song.  She had listened to it so many times in the days after their first meeting, and then again throughout the years after they went their separate years, jaded and bitter and still so in love that she couldn't admit to anyone else that she still kept his albums, because it hurt too much just to say his name.  It was three minutes and thirty-seven seconds exactly.  But here, it would run three minutes and fifty-two seconds, because he liked to add some flourishes.  </p>
<p>Even as the last note sounded across the bar, Caroline began to walk towards the bar.  She knew the exact stool she had sat on that night.  There was a tear in it, one that had been mended, but it was the same rusty red color, and even though she hadn't sat on one of these stools in years, something about it still felt like coming home.  </p>
<p>Something about it made everything seem colorful again, even though the dim light of the bar meant it was even darker than it had been outside without the sun.</p>
<p>"Do you ever think of me?"</p>
<p>Those hadn't been the first words he'd ever spoken to her.  Those had been "let me get that" and it had turned into... her biggest mistake?  Her greatest regret?  It had been both and everything in between at different points over the years.</p>
<p>But that had been then, and no matter that she might have felt nineteen again for those few brief moments the song had played, it had been a sweet dream, but nothing more.  Years had passed, and this was now. </p>
<p>"Every day," she replied, because even at their worst, they had never lied to each other.  They had said cruel, bitter words - but every one of them had been the truth. "Do you ever think of me?"</p>
<p>"I wrote an entire album about you, Love."</p>
<p>"That was five years ago.  It won you the Grammy." Caroline hadn't ordered, but the bartender brought her a rye with gingerale.  In front of Klaus, he put a glass of water.  "That's new."</p>
<p>"That's not," he nodded at her own drink.  "But Hank's never forgotten a drink order in his life.  If you'd prefer something else, best tell him now.  Perhaps a nice pinot."</p>
<p>Caroline took a sip of the rye, and tried to remember when she had ordered it last.  It had been years.  She had clung to it as the last reminder of a small town life, but somewhere along the way she had discarded that girl entirely.  She'd held too many memories, and Caroline had wanted to pretend to be someone else.  Someone that had never felt pain before in her life.</p>
<p>Stefan had never complained; he liked that he hadn't had to put any actual work into them. </p>
<p>"I hear there's an engagement in the making," Klaus said after a few beats of silence.  "Congratulations."</p>
<p>"Tomorrow, you'll hear that there's a divorce.  Maybe.  I don't think any of my people have actually talked to Damon or Elena's people." She discarded the straw entirely and drained the glass, then tapped the edge, so Hank would refill it.  "He slept with her."</p>
<p>Another long pause, and then, "I'm sorry to hear that."</p>
<p>"No you're not," Caroline replied with an inelegant snort.  "I thought honesty was the one place we never went wrong.  Things really do change."</p>
<p>She sounded angry.  And bitter.</p>
<p>She was angry and bitter.</p>
<p>She should be angry and bitter with Stefan, because he was the one that ruined everything.  They'd had a good thing going, and he'd tossed it aside because he couldn't stay away from his brother's wife.  But she still felt nothing about that situation.</p>
<p>But Klaus... she'd felt many things for Klaus.  Nothing had never been in the cards between them. </p>
<p>"I'm sorry he hurt you," Klaus corrected, and that, Caroline thought, might actually been true. </p>
<p>"He didn't," she replied simply.  "I never gave anyone that power.  Not after you."</p>
<p>There were so many words unspoken between them.  They hadn't been able to say them back then, and now they were stuck in their throats and making them both choke.  Or maybe she was the only one choking.  </p>
<p>Klaus was just looking at her, the same way he always had. </p>
<p>"I shouldn't have come here," she said as Hank gave her the refill.  But she didn't pick it up and toss it back the way she wanted to.  Because Klaus still had just water in front of him, and she wasn't sure if she was proud or hurt, and she was afraid of what words she would unleash on him if she had another. "I don't know why I came here."</p>
<p>"Don't you?"</p>
<p>He always smirked at her like that, when he thought she was lying to herself and he knew all the truths in the world.  It was a confrontational smirk that had always made her irate. </p>
<p>"Why did you stop drinking?" she shot back with the same confrontational tone. </p>
<p>"Because I didn't stop back then, and I lost you.  And when Elijah managed to pull me out of the bottle I was trying to drown myself in, he made me realize that if I ever wanted you again, I would have to pull myself out and face the consequences of what I'd done sober."</p>
<p>Caroline swallowed, and pushed her rye a little further away.</p>
<p>"You never said anything about wanting me back."</p>
<p>"I wrote an entire album.  And you never said anything."</p>
<p>She had been with Stefan by then, trying to ignore the album that had been everywhere, because she'd read it as a good-bye letter.  To what they once had.  In the end, she'd bought it, because ignoring it had been impossible, and Klaus had always had a way with words that spoke to her in ways beyond their relationship. </p>
<p>"If I said I wanted you to take me away," she said slowly, testing each word out carefully as she said it.  "What would you do?"</p>
<p>"Where do you want to go?"</p>
<p>It wasn't a direct answer, yet it was.  Klaus had never been a pushover in their relationship.  There were things he liked to control.  He had his preferences.  But he'd always taken a sort of glee in giving her her heart's desire.  </p>
<p>"Can you take me back to who we were a decade ago?" she asked, heart aching with bittersweet memories.  "Give us a do over?"</p>
<p>"Do you think it would change anything?"</p>
<p>No, of course.  Because in the end, the issue hadn't been them.  It had been the bottle that was always between them, and Klaus had already started down that path before Caroline had ever met him.  It made her ache for the boy he had been before they had ever entered each other's orbit.</p>
<p>It made her heart ache for the naive fools they'd been, the ones that had met too late, and because of that never really stood a change. Not with who they'd been, individually and together. </p>
<p>"I miss you," she said at last, and she found herself leaning into his side, his arm wrapping around her waist.  How many times had they sat there, just like that?  Too many to count.  "That's the real answer - do I think of you?  Yes, and I miss you."</p>
<p>"You've never been the type to run, Caroline.  Not until you've no other options - I know that best.  But if you'd let me, I'd stand by you."</p>
<p>"I didn't.  Stand by you.  You're being too nice, Klaus.  You're shitty at being nice."</p>
<p>His chuckle made his chest rumble, and she felt him press a kiss to her hair.  Part of her, the jaded part, told her this was just the magic of the bar.  That it had swept her back in time, but as soon as they left the bar, the world would be dulled again.</p>
<p>The other part of her, the girl with bright eyes and hope in her heart said that the world was never dull around Klaus.  It never had been - and L.A. had always been the city of second chances. </p>
<p>"You would have, had I let you. But I was an ass.  I still am.  I'm just a sober ass with clearer vision."</p>
<p>And Caroline, who had stopped listening to that dead girl inside of her looked up at Klaus, and she'd done the one thing she hadn't done since the last time she'd been in this exact position.  She hoped. </p>
<p>And she took a chance.</p>
<p>"Stand by me, then."</p>
<p>And outside, the sun broke through the clouds, throwing color back into a city that had seemed to be lacking it for far too long. </p>
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